Has anyone ever had issues with the Cinch failing to catch on big lead falls? I know of someone who just dropped a climber while belaying with a Cinch. I have never had any problems and have not been able to recreate the incident in any configuration other than loading it backwards. FYI, the belayer is emphatic that they loaded it right. Not looking to start an argument with this thread, just data gathering.

I saw it happen beside me at a crag in 2011. In short, I had just finished the climb and recommended it to some passers-by. The climb is 32m and follows a steep arete with little rope drag. Clipping the chains is tricky and the leader blew it. He fell approx. 15m and the belayer ended up with what he described as rope burns on his hands. I don't think the "burns" were that bad, and he was more concerned that the device slipped so much.

Unfortunately, I did not see the fall, just where he ended up. I imagine there was quite a bit of slack out for clipping, so only a few meters slipped through.

Now that I think about it, it seems odd that the belayer was not lifted off the ground very much, as they looked to be lighter than the climber.

If you search through old threads on the cinch, you'll see I was a big advocate and used it trouble free for a number of years using the old method of clipping it in. This past summer while belaying someone, I had the cinch slip for the first time. The climber was on lead, with her tie in about 2 feet above the previous bolt. She pumped out and took what should have been a relatively small fall that ended up being closer to 15 ft. It was a somewhat slow fall initially where she kind of slumped into it without actually calling take. I had by right hand with thumb and index finger on the pivot with 3 fingers wrapped around the rope and when she fell my hand gripped down on the rope, but not super tight, expecting the cinch to lock. I think the slipping was cause by the slow fall resulting in the cinch not locking. I ended up with pretty severe burns on my hand before the cinch locked. Haven't used it since and switch to a grigri2. Still miss the super smooth belay with the cinch but I can't trust it any more. Emailed Trango but never got a reply. The new method for setting up the cinch is supposed to make it lock up more reliably but I haven't tried it.

No device - not an ATC, not a grigri, not a Cinch, nor an Eddy holds falls - belayers hold falls. You should always be able to stop any fall even with the cam completely open/disengaged on an autoblocking device.

There should never be a situation or circumstance where your grip on, and management of, the rope should ever be incapable of holding a fall. Assume otherwise and you will eventually become part of an unhappy statistic.

The bottom line is all such incidents are 'belay issues', not device issues.

The Cinch certainly has a reputation of virtually unnoticeable wear considerably reducing the braking power.

It is the nature of the design that short falls are held positively and longer ones much less so, the previous advertising by Trango promoted this as a feature. There are unpublished drop tests which show this is in fact the case and the higher fall-factor tests show in my opinion some distinctly worrying characteristics, the reasons are in the design of the device and nothing to do with operator failure though they are common enough.

There was a longish thread on the theme on one of the German forums describing similar problems and with a number of previously happy users who had become converted to other devices. They are/were banned in several walls in Germany.

You should be able to hold a leader fall on a Cinch or grigri holding the device handle open. If you can't, you are always at risk of this kind of incident be there wear, stray debris in the device, or any other reason.

You should be able to hold a leader fall on a Cinch or grigri holding the device handle open. If you can't, you are always at risk of this kind of incident be there wear, stray debris in the device, or any other reason.

You mean "One" surely, there isnīt a chance in hell Iīd ever belay with a Cinch. With a Grigri fully open it functions as a fairly poor belay device but only fairly poor, I tested this once and it is something like half a powerful as an ATC and certainly enough for lowering but really marginal for abseiling. With a Cinch the rope runs virtually straight through with the obvious consequences.

You should be able to hold a leader fall on a Cinch or grigri holding the device handle open. If you can't, you are always at risk of this kind of incident be there wear, stray debris in the device, or any other reason.

You mean "One" surely, there isnīt a chance in hell Iīd ever belay with a Cinch. With a Grigri fully open it functions as a fairly poor belay device but only fairly poor, I tested this once and it is something like half a powerful as an ATC and certainly enough for lowering but really marginal for abseiling. With a Cinch the rope runs virtually straight through with the obvious consequences.

Aside from the fact that the Cinch does in fact start to slip after heavy wear, the device is the best belay device on the market IMO. I have caught over 1,000 lead falls on it, including one 40' near-factor-two fall and I have never had an issue. I have also taken nearly as many lead falls while being belayed on the device. The solution to the wear problem is simple. All you need to do is send the Cinch to Trango for warranty and they will send you a new one.

Yeah, that would probably have been the better word, but my point really isn't directed at the Cinch per se so much as at all autoblocking devices. 'One' should be able to catch a fall with the handle pulled open on any of them if you are really 'belaying'.

You should be able to hold a leader fall on a Cinch or grigri holding the device handle open. If you can't, you are always at risk of this kind of incident be there wear, stray debris in the device, or any other reason.

I can almost assure you that would be really difficult with a Cinch. The rope runs in a very straight one when the handle is open. I doubt it would be a very effective belay device if the cam could not engage. A Grigri would likely work better.

Me too. Same year, in fact. What should have been at most a 20-foot fall, ended up being about 60 feet with rope slipping through the device, and the climber came to a stop not more than 3 feet off the deck.

I have never trusted the Cinch on account of these occasional inexplicable and unreproducible incidents.

Nothing 'inexplicable' about it, these folks weren't belaying as they had abdicated that responsibility to the device which can and does bite you hard when you do this with any auto locking device.

It's pretty fundamental, assume the device may not lock up for some reason and belay accordingly. This is all a direct cost and consequence of bringing climbers up on 'almost always' auto locking devices and not in any way specific to the Cinch.

My father was an old 747 captain and once explained that some accidents were a result of younger pilots being brought up in multiengine planes. Old pilots who started in single engine planes instinctively go for altitude when they sense the slightest problem because if your only engine quits, altitude equals time. Younger pilots lack that instinct, tend to think they can get by on the other engines, and sometimes that bites them hard in the same manner.

Has anyone ever had issues with the Cinch failing to catch on big lead falls? I know of someone who just dropped a climber while belaying with a Cinch. I have never had any problems and have not been able to recreate the incident in any configuration other than loading it backwards. FYI, the belayer is emphatic that they loaded it right. Not looking to start an argument with this thread, just data gathering.

Pitch some more data our way will ya?

A) How old/worn was the Cinch?

B) What was the rope diameter?

C) How long had the belayer been climbing and what was his approx skill level?

Cinches wear much faster than Grigris as far as I can tell, and not many folks are into replacing the roll pin that carries most of the wear burden. Since we are on the airplane allusions, much like the old pilots who would routinely do a pre-flight inspection, have any of you recently seen or known of many (any?) to really check their gear? Back in the day, people would often run their fingers over their entire rope. Don't see that any more.

Love the Cinch for belaying. However, like all mechanical things, they wear. My friend Stan Miller, who probably uses his Cinch as much or more than anyone on this board, has shared his method of replacing the Dowel Pin that is the main wear point. Allowing the Dowel pin to get too low will allow faster wear on the body. As Stan is not just a better climber, but much smarter than me, his replacement went much better. So I'll share Stans routine on this.

Here's a newer one, this is the way the dowel pin is supposed to look. ie, new. You can see that as the pin wears, the metal off to the left of the pin wears as well. Putting a new dowel pin in there reduces the wear on the surrounding base metal.

Stans, with some markings pointing things out. I figured I'd just grab our little press at work and use the new dowel pin to replace the old without doing anything to the existing jig. This is called laziness. My son had jigged up some PDFE for a job, which I took about 3 seconds to blow out. Dohh. Furthermore, as it wasn't straight, I actually blew a few thousands of the edge of the Cinch where the rope will be running away. You can see that error where the metal isn't flush to the pin in the last pic. Stan had said that the pin came out with very little pressure.

Tore the jig out and hammered the wood in half with a hammer and a screwdriver, then used the PDFE to support the Cinch. Out with the old and in with the new.

Gear notes:

Cheapo press. 5/16 x 3/4 Dowel pin Wear reading glasses, not safety glasses so you can see what you are doing.

I have extra dowel pins if you want to try this yourself, ask me for one if you see me out and about. You can easily get a 5/16" x 3/4" long dowel pin at any hardware store as well.

Back on track. What I haven't been able to correlate is what kind of grip/strength reduction is achieved in the Cinch at what level of wear. Certainly there is some, in fact, mine would not grip well rappelling a single rope if it was a thinner one (and had a slick dry coating applied too). So I could see a worn dowel pin and a brand new thin dry coated rope being a bad combo to hold a whipper. You would most certainly get the rope running through the device and zipping through your hands, and if you were not wearing gloves, it would be very painful, I don't care what your skill level of belaying was.

Give us the full Paul Harvey and let us know: "the rest of the story, Good day".

Nothing 'inexplicable' about it, these folks weren't belaying as they had abdicated that responsibility to the device which can and does bite you hard when you do this with any auto locking device.

It's pretty fundamental, assume the device may not lock up for some reason and belay accordingly.

The problem is that if the device does not lock up, there may be no reasonable way to belay "accordingly," that is, in a manner that would stop the fall. There are lots of climbers harboring the illusion, for instance, that if they were to thread a Grigri (I) backward that they could catch a fall. They're wrong. A top rope fall? Maybe. A lead fall of any significance? No. The device simply does not provide enough braking force (or force multiplication) in this configuration. I'm no expert on the Cinch, but I suspect that there are situations, perhaps rare, in which the device does not lock and does not provide sufficient braking force to enable the belayer to stop the fall.

Nothing 'inexplicable' about it, these folks weren't belaying as they had abdicated that responsibility to the device which can and does bite you hard when you do this with any auto locking device.

It's pretty fundamental, assume the device may not lock up for some reason and belay accordingly.

The problem is that if the device does not lock up, there may be no reasonable way to belay "accordingly," that is, in a manner that would stop the fall. There are lots of climbers harboring the illusion, for instance, that if they were to thread a Grigri (I) backward that they could catch a fall. They're wrong. A top rope fall? Maybe. A lead fall of any significance? No. The device simply does not provide enough braking force (or force multiplication) in this configuration. I'm no expert on the Cinch, but I suspect that there are situations, perhaps rare, in which the device does not lock and does not provide sufficient braking force to enable the belayer to stop the fall.

Jay

I bought a Cinch after one was involved in an accident that I was involved in the rescue for. I played with it and tried really hard to learn what the failure modes for it are. I found a number of ways to make the device slip, some of them that are easy to avoid and others that are quite difficult. The device seemed very finicky to me; it requires a very specific orientation to be used safely. Simply stumbling as a belayer could put you in a bad situation.

In the end, I decided that I was totally unwilling to accept the risk that came along with the device after giving it a fair chance. To each their own, but I found it is easier to mitigate the failure modes of the GriGri (1 or 2.) I would far rather belay off of a Munter, an ATC, a GriGri, or a Sticht plate than a Cinch. Of course, all devices have failure modes; I just don't like how easy I found it to be in a failure mode with the Cinch. Just my opinion; flame on.

To address opinion of 'you should be able to make the catch regardless,' this isn't realistic with the Cinch cam design. You have a better chance with the GriGri or Eddy; I still wouldn't want to try it.

BTW, if anyone wants to buy a Cinch with very little wear, let me know .

Yeah, that would probably have been the better word, but my point really isn't directed at the Cinch per se so much as at all autoblocking devices. 'One' should be able to catch a fall with the handle pulled open on any of them if you are really 'belaying'.

But don't forget that strange stuff happens, like in my accident, where my belayer was knocked out cold. Msr. Gri gri saved the day.

There isn't an autoblocking device made I couldn't hold a leader fall just fine with the device held open.

Can you explain how you would do that, say with a grogri 1 held open and a slick new 10.0 mm rope, with a significant fall factor and a 170 lb climber. Also: you don't know in advance that the grigri is being held open.

I don't know what you mean by "braking over the thigh." I do not believe that the little bit of friction you could get over your thigh is going to be enough to stop a fall with the little help you're going to get from a wide open grigri and slick rope.